Sunday morning, the Garden, 33 AD: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen." (Lk 24:5) – And He took my hand, 2000 years later, as we were leaving the grave I had been lying in, frozen, for more than twenty years, and He smiled at me, our hands entwined, our shared wounds turning into scars covering each other, our engagement rings touching; and we walked around the garden of my soul and suddenly I wanted to see the place of my former torment. So we went there and it was merely an old weathered stone with cut chains and rusted spikes and burnt ashes strewn around it, and I saw the cross looming up beside it, with cut ropes and countless myriads of little nails that merged into three massive ones lying at its foot. And He turned to me and said "We can look at this. It does not hold any horror any more, because we have been freed from it. God has set us free. I was released by the Father, and you were released by me." And I nodded and said, part of me astonished at myself: "It is no longer menacing, it is just there. It has lost its terror because it has lost its power. It is gone, it is past, these are only harmless remains, like ruins from a bygone age. It leaves me rather untouched." He smiled at me and said: "It is a monument of triumph that testifies to our survival. Together, we will set captives free." Tentatively, I closed my hands around the hilt of the majestic sword He was holding out towards me and felt His fingers reassuringly cover mine. I smiled back at him, letting Him take care of the sword, grasped His hand faster and skipped away with Him to dance in our garden.

[All this has truly happened to me. The only change I have made to the original sequel of revelations was partially condensing several encounters that took place in the course of two years into one encounter for the sake of brevity.]

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